


(Cave) in

by Itylien



Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Decisions, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Non-Explicit, Possession, Post-Canon, Trapped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:54:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21838561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Itylien/pseuds/Itylien
Summary: He hadn’t noticed shadows dancing around him - moving and swirling and finally sinking into bare soles of his feet. His eyes never once left the witcher’s trail.
Relationships: Iorveth/Vernon Roche
Comments: 4
Kudos: 42
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	(Cave) in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Filigranka](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Filigranka/gifts).



> I hope you're happy, healthy and having good time!

_Of course he was playing both sides!_ Roche berated himself silently, watching the witcher carefully navigate a mess of shattered rocks and fallen trees until the man slipped into one of the fissures that definitely did not seem wide enough to fit him.

_Clearly he was. He’s a witcher! Whatever game he’s after likely has very little to do games of thrones._

But damn it he liked Geralt. Maybe because of the witcher’s vehement neutrality. And not only that — he trusted him. Despite many very good reasons not to. It hurt to have a friend lie to him — again, use him — again. He wanted to see what for.

_Is that knowledge important enough for you to justify following a witcher into cursed elven catacombs?_ A voice, eerily reminiscent of Ves sardonic drawl, queried in his mind.

_Apparently so, yes._

Vernon Roche was not superstitious. He didn’t know much about magic at all. Certainly not enough to recognize its influence. Regular person would maybe have been alerted that something wasn’t right with the idea of leaving not just their weapons but all their clothing behind as well, but he was so used to shucking off uniform to go undercover that his body moved through the motions on its own.

_It’ll be easier to remain unnoticed to witcher’s keen, keen senses with no jangling to worry about._

He hadn’t noticed shadows dancing around him — moving and swirling and finally sinking into bare soles of his feet. His eyes never once left the witcher’s trail.

*

Geralt was surprisingly easy to follow despite taking the most convoluted route imaginable while going deeper into the caves. He kept making these sudden turns and stepping into open coffins at seemingly random intervals. Sometimes he would just pause for a moment to swing his swords at empty air.

Watching the man move through the flow of combat with no opponent in sight was quite fascinating, even if it made no sense. Maybe it was some ritual.

Finally, the witcher came to a stop in the middle of a huge, cavernous chamber. It was positively littered with stone coffins, some shattered but most just… Empty.

So many empty coffins. Why even bother with stone coffins if they're not put to use?

A blink and weak, wavering light came into view in the furthermost corner of the cavern. Someone was coming. Slowly and carefully, obviously trying to keep quiet.

Why would they need a light? The cave was bright as day.

Recognition hit like a wave, darkening Roche’s vision with... rage? It was quickly stomped down. His eyes needed to be focused. He needed to be steady.

The elf held some kind of enchanted light aloft, heavy sack slung forward through his chest. Something was in it, something Roche needed to-

It was kind of funny how wide Geralt’s eyes went when Roche stepped into the chamber. The witcher was moving so very uncharacteristically slowly, slow enough for it to be possible to notice widening of his serpentine pupils in unusual detail.

Ves usually referred to Geralt’s eyes as cat-like but privately Roche felt only people who wanted to fuck the man would see them like that. To him the witcher was a snake and his eyes were snake-like — gaze cold, thin-slit pupils barely reactive.

They sure reacted now though, rounding so much it was hard to believe they were normally barely there. He did end up looking like a cat. Playful cat.

Thinking of it now Roche liked cats. Independent, suspicious bastards that they were.

The elf was much more cat-like, however. Huffy and standoffish. His form elegant and deceivingly tempting but really just waiting to sink his claws into unsuspecting flesh. Would he purr?

Many strange thoughts were floating through his mind at the moment, oil-sleek and alien most of them, but this one registered as unusual. He had no time to react to it. It was too late. Whatever used him as a vehicle had enough momentum to throw his body at the elf and use his hands to get-

*

Absolute darkness swallowed him whole. He fell to his knees clutching his head and screaming. Very air in his lungs turned to soap. His throat hurt from the roar of triumph he could still hear reverberating off the walls and his bones were rattling from the shiver that passed through the ground, as if something huge was prepared to take breath.

He was yanked up abruptly enough that the collar of his shirt tore right off.

“For fuck’s sake...” _Geralt_ , Roche noted, relieved even as the witcher’s grasp moved to the scruff of his neck and he was unceremoniously flung aside with great force. 

He barely managed to right himself before the impact of something heavy smashed him into unconsciousness.

***

The witcher had assured him the passage will be cleared — and it was. Taking care to keep quiet never hurt him yet though, and these creepy old caves were surely not a place to test his luck.

The skull he hanged from across his chest, where the bow would usually rest, to keep one hand free in case something was to attack him in the darkness after all.

Nothing did. Nothing noteworthy happened at all until he spotted Geralt.

The witcher was alone, glowering suspiciously at the emptiness around him. Silver wolf he wore around his neck rose into the air, snarling in scattered glow of bottled starlight. It was looking straight at-

Iorweth had no time to register what attacked him. All of a sudden there was a wall of sound like bellowing of winter winds, and then the very earth shook beneath him.

He was already dashing back the way he came when the witcher grabbed him and hurled him into the dark. He hit something that grunted in pain and barely half a heartbeat later something else bashed into him from behind. A slab of rock. To seal him in. With… Dandelion? Certainly a human in any case and few were fool enough to trail behind the witcher.

The stone at his back flashed with scorching heat. Mithril covering of his gambeson dissipated the sear of it somewhat but the surrounding air was heated almost to a boil in an instant.

What the fuck was the witcher doing?

Truthfully, from the witcher’s cagey behavior in their interactions, his insistence on stealth and then on conducting all business during a day anyway, it was not hard to figure out what happened — something was after the skull the witcher demanded in exchange for leading Temerians away from the catacombs. Clearly it got what it wanted since Geralt had apparently deemed burying him and the bard alive to be less deadly than having them caught in crossfire. 

Literally fire.

Stone cooled some but the surrounding air remained scalding. He will not be able to take this heat for long. Worse yet, he will have to suffer the indignity of it while being forced to endure human stink that was sure to become unbearable soon. Still, better to smell the bard than to have to listen to-

He startled, instinctively looking down even though the darkness was impenetrable. Humans always carried vague fetor of salt and sulfur on them. No exceptions. Not even for the witchers. But under the stench of human skin this one bore traces of another scent, unrecognizable yet familiar somehow. Pleasant.

This better not be Dandelion.

***

He couldn’t breathe.

Panic blazed through him like heat. He flinched, tried to move one way, then the other but couldn’t budge whatever was crushing him. He would have fought but one of his hands was smashed against his body hard enough to have gone numb and the other someone held down, pressed firmly into warm rubble behind him.

“Don’t move dh’oine. I don’t want to break your neck and be stuck here with your corpse.” Familiar voice rasped right in his ear. Iorweth. Back from the dead. Why was Roche surprised?

“Wha-” He tried to push the elf off, maneuver himself so a sharp rock was no longer attempting to merge with his kidney. In response the elf crushed him with all of his fully padded weight, knocking the wind out of him again.

“Do not. Move. Human.” A hiss, then a suggestion of teeth brushed close enough to his throat to be a threat. Roche froze, took a moment to let his brain catch up with whatever was going on — there was irregular stone at his back with absolutely no give to it, there was also the elf mashed up way too closely and blistering heat rising in the surrounding blackness.

“What happened?” What he remembers made no sense. 

“Witcher is dealing with some demon. Probably one you brought in here. Defiler.” Roche hadn’t bother with denial. He was mostly naked, barefoot, unarmed and probably underground, with an elf pressed right up to his jugular. To get himself into that state he would have to be possessed indeed. Or suffer inexplicable bout of sudden, terminal stupidity.

“When?” His throat was dry. Last he knew he was trailing the witcher into a cave, looking for an entry to what the locals swore were elven tombs but to him sounded like considerable tactical advantage for Dragonqueen troops for when all diplomatic dances end and it comes time to invade.

“Just now human. How long do you think we’ll manage to live in here?” the elf was talking right against him. Breath cold, deformed lips scraping his skin. Roche's mind kept circling through memories of all the many corpses he’s seen with their throats torn out, of men stupid enough to think an elf without a weapon in hand was unarmed.

He kept motionless and silent and eventually the elf relented enough for him to feel for himself exactly how little space there was for them. He could hear a faint, muted suggestion of a struggle coming from outside but mostly there was a steady, whooshing sound that he would have mistaken for the rush of his own blood if it wasn’t out of sync with his heartbeat.

Fire. There was fire raging outside.

“Son of a bitch. There really is an ifrit?”

“Well human, that’s impressive.” The elf leaned just a little bit harder against him, “Who did you have to kill for this information?”

No one. Ves fucked Geralt for it. She and Roche were both convinced the witcher fed her bullshit to get them off his back and deal with whatever really went on under the hills in peace. Turns out he was telling the truth. Not the whole truth, certainly, but apparently enough of it.

“And these really are catacombs, huh?” If he could he would have covered his face with his hands. As it was he just knocks his head back against the rocks a few times. Hard. Cursed elven catacombs sounded like such a contrived _line_ when Ves relayed it to him.

“Yes, dh’oine. Long ago they were. You can now add desecration to the list of crimes you committed upon my kind.” The reply took several moments to arrive. When it finally did the words sounded… faint. Slurred. Certainly lacked biting cadence he was used to from the elf. Moreso, while Iorweth was no longer actively trying to crush him he didn’t seem to be holding his own weight either.

Elves ran cold — Roche realized. Northern elves especially stood much impervious to bad weather. Their blood spilled hot but their skin remained cool at all times. In turn their tolerance for the opposite seems to have left much to be desired if just few moments of scorching heat in their temporary grave were enough to render the elf half-conscious.

“Who’s going to be stuck with whose corpse, you said?” He couldn’t see the elf and so had no way of confirming his suspicion, other than by feeling. And what he was feeling was cold, elven breath sending panicked goosebumps down his spine. It was definitely not in his best interest for the elf to go delirious.

“Hey!” He shook the elf a few times, trying to open the buckles of padded elven armor by touch alone. “Get it off.” Mithril covering of it was even hotter than the blazing rock, heat coming off of it so steady it took few moments for Roche to register it was burning his fingers. Crushed together as they were there was really nothing else he could do to get the elf out of his padding if the other was too far gone to cooperate. “Iorweth! You’re set to bake yourself. Move it!”

Surprisingly it worked. The elf shrugged off the sleeves and moved to yank the front of the gambeson from between them. Of course no good deed ever goes unpunished so on their way off the buckles Roche just opened with his own hands tore painful scratches across his chest, stench of fresh blood mixing into already thick air instantly.

Fantastic. Now all he needed to crown the day was for the elf to remember he would actually really like to tear him apart. There was no space to keep the elf away, nowhere to run. If something were to snap in Iorweth's brain — addled at the best of times as it was — Roche couldn’t even have a prayer of strangling the elf in time. Not with his bare hands. Not unless he gives no struggle.

He jolted in surprise when the elf started muttering to himself. Murmur of unintelligible, shimmering elvenspeach felt like a blade trailing against his throat, a chill reminder Iorweth could bury his teeth in him at any moment. Best to keep still. Best to wait for the elf to grow weak. Best to hope he gives no struggle.

***

It was hard to breathe for the fetid miasma of human sweat, blood, and fear. The hotter it got the stronger the smell. Overwhelming. The air soaked with it, forcing the human deeper into himself with every lungful.

Constant heat dazed him, the stone and the human only things propping him up, but instead of going light and quiet his mind kept buzzing, puzzling at the subtle, barely-there trace of a smell it insisted on detecting — of something old and far away, vast and timeless.

He had no idea what. Couldn’t focus enough to-

The sea.

He has never seen the sea. Why would he-

Where the roar of the fire met the human heartbeat he could hear the sea. Smell it in the air. Human skin was slick with it.

Tasted of it.

***

Indistinct muttering soon turned into soft nibbling and that was a lot for the elf to expect him to take without comment. Even worse, elven hands began to stray. Idly and aimlessly but constantly leaving cold trails on his insufficiently covered flesh. Thinking of them as mindlessly slithering slugs helped, but not by very much and not for very long.

“Elf. Have you lost your mind? What the fuck are you doing?” He tried to jerk away again as soon as cold fingers began to inch under his shirt.

He didn’t know what he expected, but it wasn’t for the elf to double down.

“You smell of the sea, human.” Coherent the elf was not. Inscrutable darkness made it hard to be sure whether this nonsense was a fever getting to the elf or some bizarre form of mocking.

“Yeah, well, you smell like medicine elf. Because you’re dying. Very soon if-”

Son of a bitch bit him. With no warning just chomped down to the quick like it was nothing.

Kneeing the elf in the gut was a completely thoughtless, instinctive response. Not a very good one. You don’t engage elves in hand-to-hand combat — not ever. They’re faster, they’re stronger, they’re going to eat you alive. First thing he told new recruits. Hell of a time to forget his own counsel.

The elf had him down in a flash, crushed into the rocks. Didn’t bother with any subtle threats this time.

“Let me in, human. Just let me-” Scarred lips brushed past his and he snapped his teeth in warning but it was for nothing. The elf just raked his nails up his back and used his pained gasp to get where he wanted, forcing him into a deep, slow kiss. Roche bit down on him, obviously, but that only served to tangle them closer.

The moment the elf became too distracted to mind him Roche made a grab for the other’s throat, trying to strangle him after all. Determined to give it his best try anyway. He almost made it too — with one hand tangled into open padding at the elf’s neck — but the other landed squarely on Iorweth’s face, thumb across his mouth, fingers trailing over the ruin they found instead of his cheek.

Were he a different man — a better man maybe — he would have torn into already destroyed, vulnerable flesh. The elf was waiting for him to. Forcing him to choose whether to turn peculiar intimacy of their sweltering grave into violence. He could.

Instead his fingers slid up, slowly, blindly feeling for the valley of the missing eye under its cover and there wasn’t very much to say after that.

He could feel the elf smile, lips stretching then parting to worry at his thumb, nibbling at it the same way the elf has been gnawing at his neck — lightly but insistently. And he just kept… Letting.

Let the elf have more kisses. Let himself be moved where the elf wanted him. Let harsh cloth covering elven thigh slide against him to bring vague, unwilling arousal into full hardness and then beyond.

In no way should he have allowed any of this but there was particular sense of satisfaction in having the elf purr for him.

Absolutely obliterated the moment witcher tore away the lid of their coffin.

***

He wasn’t even under contract, he remembered, suddenly, the core crushed in his grasp crumbling to ash. Just thought it would do to investigate the local legend. Relations on the border being what they were the hills may well turn a battleground next time he’s in these parts, with whatever haunting the catacombs gorged into actual power on spectral backlash.

Elves tended to siphon so much magic into their crypts sooner or later all of them were bound to become a hazard. Even they didn’t understand some auxiliary rituals used to appease whatever powers slumbered among their dead anymore.

Roche bringing the shades into the chamber before he managed to fortify it was certainly not ideal but the upside — relative — was that the spirit lost itself in the intensity of focus the skull provided. It got too hot, too fast burning away the artifact and leaving itself open too wide, spread too thin, with its core bared for the taking.

Still, all the potions, charms and enchantments in the world could not protect him from concentrated heat of a fire spirit trying to survive. It only grabbed him for a flash but his arm — the one that crushed it — was rendered completely useless. It may only hurt a little right now — and it was a good thing it hurt at all since Vesemir used to say you’re only ever really in trouble when it stops hurting — but it smelled delicious.

Fight itself was short — raising flames and throwing things were really the extend of the ifrit’s abilities but it would have been enough had he not taken the Reliever's at the entry.

Once the Cat stopped working the flames provided light enough to see but now it was back to total darkness. He found himself lying on the ground for a while, letting the pain settle his mind, wrap his bones in its protective shroud. Maybe a bit longer than he should have considering he had yet to get _his highness_ and the elf from the stone.

He shouldn’t really stall on that but well. If they baked or died from lack of air — or killed each other — there was no rush.

And if they were fine they’ll keep.

Against all odds bottled starlight Iorweth brought with him survived fiery pandemonium only a little worse for wear. It was the constant merry blinking of it — changing the cadences of darkness around him — that finally got him moving. He still had to take another Cat before he was ready to face either the men or their corpses.

With one arm only and no adrenaline to help him along heaving the slab of off the sarcophagus went not without effort, but he managed and was gratified to find both the human and the elf seemed perfectly fine after all. A little worse for wear and the smell was unfortunate but...

His brow furrowed, tired mind struggling to connect what was being registered to the situation at hand.

Then it did.

Then he regretted the Cat.

And then he remembered, once again, he was not, in fact, being paid for this at all.

The end.

Bonus:

Patrol was usually mind-numbingly boring. Sometimes too exciting by half but once in a while things got…

Weird.

Sun hasn’t really moved yet since their glorious leader disappeared into old catacombs, carrying powerful magical artifact to bribe some witcher with. That was fine. It's been known to happen. Cavorting with strange witchers in Mahakam foothills was just a part of Iorweth's personality.

Shortly after he disappeared inside though it got really hot by the mouth of the cave and while they all got kind of worried they have also all served under their leader long enough to know that sometimes it was best to leave him to his pursuits.

Then the blaze dissipated and they all had the fascinating experience of witnessing a set up of a jest in real life.

A drunk elf, naked human and half-baked witcher climb out of a cave…

Hilarious. Unless you’re duty-bound to figure out what happened and what to do next. And the elf is technically your commanding officer.

All of their first instinct was to just kill the human. They have all served in scoia’tael. But the witcher made it clear they would have to do it over his dead body and the signs pointed that it was _the_ witcher so while rendering his body dead might not have seemed unfathomable at the moment there was a possibility it would be better not to.

It would have also been great to have their commanding officer’s input on any of that, but he was too wilted to say anything. Turns out he was not drunk at all — just dealing with a very bad heatstroke. Okay.

Then one of them added two and two together to realize — and inform them all, thus destroying all possible plausible deniability — that, if this was the favorite witcher of the Empress, and the buck naked human name was Roche, they in all likelihood, had the Duke of Mahakam on their hands. A hostage.

And thus the situation turned political.

**Author's Note:**

> This pertains to all of us, always, but I feel you especially could use some more luck this oncoming year.  
> Wesołych Świąt i Szczęśliwego Nowego Roku!


End file.
